Study Links Teacher Preparation To Reading Instruction

Novice teachers who graduated from teacher-preparation programs with
a strong focus on reading instruction tend to provide richer literacy
experiences for their students than those who attended institutions
without such an emphasis, an update of an ongoing research project
suggests.

The findings were presented here April 28 at the International
Reading Association's annual conference.

The project, the largest ever undertaken by the Newark, Del.-based
association, is among the first to track teachers from their
undergraduate programs through their initial years in the classroom.
The effort is intended to gauge the effectiveness of various factors in
teacher preparation, their effect on students' classroom experiences,
and, ultimately, the impact on children's achievement in reading.

"We wanted to see what difference [high-quality reading preparation]
makes in the classroom," said James V. Hoffman, a professor of
education at the University of Texas at Austin and the chairman of the
IRA's National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher
Preparation for Reading Instruction. The commission oversees the
project.

"In the effort to address the teaching of reading, many universities
or states just add another course that deals with basic content," Mr.
Hoffman said. "That perpetuates the mentality that the delivery of
content knowledge leads to good teaching." But good preservice programs
do much more than that, he said.

Quality of Texts

The commission identified a diverse group of universities as
excellent. Their teacher-preparation programs each had a strong mission
toward preparing candidates to teach reading, and they featured
intensive apprenticeship programs that gave the aspiring teachers
classroom experience from early in their undergraduate studies.
Moreover, the programs' faculty members were active in research on
teacher preparation, and their graduates had a record of teaching
success.

The programs identified as excellent were: Florida International
University in Miami; Hunter College in New York City; Indiana
University Bloomington; Norfolk State University in Virginia; the
University of Nevada-Reno; the University of Texas at Austin; the
University of Texas at San Antonio; and the University of Sioux Falls
in South Dakota.

Heading into its third year, the project is following 100 new
teachers, 73 of whom graduated from the programs identified by the
commission, and a comparison group of 27 teachers from other
programs.

Trained observers visited the teachers' classrooms on several
occasions throughout the school year to inventory the various forms of
texts they used.

The observers looked for texts in 17 categories, including
informational text; posters; "decodable" books, or those with key words
that can be sounded out; trade books; student work samples; games and
puzzles; and computer-based text. They used detailed guidelines to
identify the quality of the materials for teaching children to read,
and any inherent connections between them.

Next, the observers conducted detailed interviews with teachers to
determine how much thought and planning went into their selection and
placement of materials. They then asked students to measure how they
used and how well they understood the various text forms. Those
interviews were intended to allow researchers to get beyond the visual
impact of classroom displays.

"Sometimes, we were overwhelmed by the colorful displays in
classrooms, but if you looked closer at the materials, you'd get a
better sense of whether they are meaningful for students," said Joyce
C. Fine, an associate professor of elementary education at Florida
International University, who is also on the IRA commission.

Pedagogy Excluded

The study is not focusing on instructional methods or the formal
curriculum. Next year, researchers will examine test data and conduct
informal assessments to try to gauge the impact the classroom texts
have on students' proficiency in various reading tasks.

While the project is investigating a necessary part of good literacy
programs, some observers predict it could draw criticism for its lack
of emphasis on pedagogy.

"It's a very good thing that people are paying attention to
dimensions of quality in teacher education," said Catherine A. Snow, a
professor of education at Harvard University. "There is likely to be a
correlation, perhaps a moderate correlation [between the quality of the
classroom texts and the quality of instruction], but this kind of study
is not addressing the real instructional issues." Ms. Snow chaired the
National Research Council reading panel that produced an influential
1998 report, "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children."

The tendency to underemphasize pedagogy has perpetuated complaints
in the past that the reading association and some researchers and
educators are not attuned to the importance of teaching basic skills to
young readers, suggested John T. Guthrie, a professor of human
development at the University of Maryland College Park.

That perception has helped fuel the "reading wars" of the past few
decades between advocates of skills-based instruction in the early
grades and those who promote a more holistic view of literacy
acquisition.

Mr. Hoffman said the IRA project scrutinized the content of the
teacher-preparation programs, and only those that provided students
with extensive knowledge in the reading process and effective
instructional methods were deemed suitable for the study.

The association has committed more than $350,000 to the project, and
participating school districts have pitched in up to $200,000 each.

Vol. 20, Issue 34, Page 5

Published in Print: May 9, 2001, as Study Links Teacher Preparation To Reading Instruction

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.